The cost and use of a much-celebrated social assistance program to help those with disabilities has significantly increased in the last few years.

Saskatchewan’s Assured Income Disability (SAID) program was introduced in 2009 to give people with long-term disabilities their own income program.

From 2010-11 up to 2014-15, the government budgeted to spend a total of $471 million, but it has cost $35 million more than that over the years.

“We failed to anticipate what the SAID caseload would be,” said Doug Scott, director of program effectiveness for SAID.

He pointed out they were closer on determining how many people would be accessing other social assistance programs, but said “we underestimated what portion of that would be on SAID.”

When introduced, the program had a budget of $39 million. At the time, the funding — which offers monthly payments to those with long-standing disabilities — was only available to those living in residential care. In the summer of 2012, it was expanded to allow those living independently to apply. The budget increased to about $113 million for the program to accommodate the change and has gone up yearly since.

“As people heard other people were getting the funds and they weren’t getting kicked off, the comfort level rose,” said Judy Hannah, chair of the Saskatchewan Disability Income Support Coalition (DISC), which helped usher in the program.

As of March, there were nearly 15,000 people using the program, compared with about 11,000 three years prior. When it started, there were fewer than 2,000 people using it. As the population grows and ages, as well as more medical assessments for what qualifies someone to get on SAID, it’s not expected the number of people accessing the program will go down.

Scott said the number of people accessing the program is expected to plateau in three to five years, as the baby boomer generation ages. He noted that in 22 of the past 24 years, the caseload of people with disabilities on public assistance programs has been increasing.

Depending on where you live and how many people are in your family, SAID income can range from $931 to $1,759 each month.

“To me, this is just a new program launched and in the first four years the numbers have steadily increased as people become aware of it,” said Hannah. “I don’t see it as a massive increase or sudden, unexpected thing, I just see it as a trend of a new program starting out.”

Before last month’s provincial election, DISC had asked campaigning parties to commit to incrementally increasing the monthly allowances given to those on SAID, but Hannah says the group has since backed off on that request.

“We’re extremely conscious of the difficult financial situation the province is in and we’re saying to the government now, ‘We understand this is not the time,’”she said.

Instead, DISC is hoping government will increase the amount of money those getting SAID funds are allowed to earn at a job, which would be much cheaper than the roughly $42-million cost of increasing monthly payments by $250 per recipient.

“We’ll watch the finances and as things improve, we’re going to come back and ask,” said Hannah.

While the upcoming June budget will show a deficit, Premier Brad Wall has asserted a commitment to holding the line on how much is allocated to Social Services, which runs the SAID program.

Hannah said there has been no indication government will eliminate the program or try reducing the number of people accessing it.

“It’s an income program, so I don’t know how you would improve — and cut costs. I think that’s contradictory,” she said. “I don’t think they improve the program by saying they need to get rid of people on it.”

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